Is Social Media a Good or Bad Source for News?

Social media has allowed everyday citizens to become authors, editors, and publishers of news and information. Do you believe that social media has increased the quality of news and information or decreased it?

Social media has drastically changed the perspective of news, becoming a primary news source. Some audiences may turn to the newspaper and others may turn to sources through social networking sites such as, Twitter and Facebook (Boididou, Papadopoulos, Newman, Schifferes, & Kompatsiaris, 2014). When it comes to social media, we are all very aware of how quickly anything can be posted and be seen by any audience. Can we trust the pieces of information that gets leaked into the public? How do we know if the quality of the content is valid? Where are the sources coming from? (Boididou, Papadopoulos, Newman, Schifferes, & Kompatsiaris, 2014) We all have to look closely and carefully at the facts.

It gets me thinking to the point that social media has decreased our quality of news, due to the fact that there is a large scale of mis-information and false claims that proliferate rapidly through social networks. In addition, anyone can become an author, or editor leading to the publishing of incorrect information that it becomes difficult to tell who created the original source in the first place (Seo, Mohapatra, & Abdelzaher). I had come across an article that discussed upon the wake of social media and its impact on news. According to a study done by Pew Research, 70% of consumers retrieve most news links from relatives and friends on Facebook, while 13% retrieved it from news journalists (Mitchell, Rosentiel, & Christian, 2012). Surprising isn’t it? Think about it, most audiences are relying on Facebook for daily news rather than going directly to the news website. 

                  

Nowadays, Facebook is a primary example of shared news that eventually becomes a hoax, such as false celebrity death rumours. An example was the Morgan Freeman death rumours that circulated quickly, causing the creation of a fake Facebook tribute page titled, “R.I.P Morgan Freeman,” reaching up to 1 million likes (Kelly, 2012).

             

Another example of how social media misleads information to individuals, led into the investigation of the perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombings (Boididou, Papadopoulos, Newman, Schifferes, & Kompatsiaris, 2014). Twitter users began to make wrongful assumptions to identifying the suspect; containing pieces of wrong information and accusing innocent people, causing distress amongst friends and family (Boididou, Papadopoulos, Newman, Schifferes, & Kompatsiaris, 2014). 

                               

It can become problematic when the reliability of news coming from social networks can have such false trails (Boididou, Papadopoulos, Newman, Schifferes, & Kompatsiaris, 2014). What can we do to prevent such issues of false rumours? How can we distinguish between real and false information? Well, we can dig deeper into the story to determine the relevance of the content and look for patterns that may get us to the answer (Boididou, Papadopoulos, Newman, Schifferes, & Kompatsiaris, 2014). Remember, to always double check with trusted sources; you never know if the information reported could be accurate or false.

References

Boididou, C., Papadopoulos, S., Newman, N., Schifferes, S., & Kompatsiaris, Y. (2014, March 26). Verification of Social Media Content for News. Retrieved February 11, 2015, from SNOW Workshop: http://www.snow-workshop.org/2014/?p=160

Kelly, M. S. (2012, November 5). 8 Social Media Hoaxes You Fell for This Year. Retrieved February 11, 2015, from Mashable: http://mashable.com/2012/11/05/social-media-hoaxes/#_

Mitchell, A., Rosentiel, T., & Christian, L. (2012). What Facebook and Twitter Mean for News. Retrieved February 11, 2015, from The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism - The State of the News Media: http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2012/mobile-devices-and-news-consumption-some-good-signs-for-journalism/what-facebook-and-twitter-mean-for-news/

Seo, E., Mohapatra, P., & Abdelzaher, T. (n.d.). Identifying Rumors and Their Sources in Social Networks. Approach, University of Illinois; University of California, Urbana; Davis. Retrieved February 11, 2015, from http://spirit.cs.ucdavis.edu/pubs/conf/prasant-spie12.pdf